How to link Google+ to Twitter

Social networking fiends have been lamenting the lack of third-party apps on Google+, which, among other things, has made it impossible to synchronise Google+ with Twitter or Facebook.

When you sync Twitter to Facebook or vice versa, whatever you post on one account automatically repost to the other. You can implement special rules and tags so that not every single post reappears on the other site. Linking and syncing makes social media management way more efficient than manually updating each site.

But a Twitter management tool now makes it possible to connect all three accounts! The trick is that you have to connect them in the right order. Here's how.

Setting up the connections

a. It asks for your Google+ account URL, which you can retrieve by clicking on your profile picture on your own Google+ page in the upper right corner. The URL will start with "https://plus.google.com/" and will then have a string of numbers before ending in "/posts". Copy and paste that URL into the first ManageFlitter field.

b. It also asks for access to your Twitter account. Enter your Twitter username and password when prompted.

c. Optional: Enable advanced settings that let you use tags (i.e., only share Google+ posts including the tag #twt; add "G+" to the start of tweets to indicated they originally were posted to Google+; tweet when you start Google+ Hangout sessions, that is, multi-person video chats; and always include a link back to the original Google+ post).

3. Connect your Twitter account to automatically repost to Facebook.

a. Sign into Facebook and find the Twitter app page.

b. Allow Twitter to connect to Facebook. It may ask you to sign into Twitter if you're not already signed in.

c. Again, you'll have some options for enabling hashtags and rules for what should be automatically reposted from Twitter to Facebook.

4. The chain should now be complete. Anything you post on Google+ will now appear on all three sites (following any special rules you've also implemented, if any).

How it works

After I set up this string and sent a few test posts, I found that a post I had written on Google+ about an hour earlier had already appeared on Twitter and Facebook. It did not find older posts (from yesterday, for example), just the one I had written about an hour before.

There may be up to an hour time delay between when you post on Google+ and when the message appears on Twitter, although there should be no delay whatsoever between when it appears on Twitter and when it posts to Facebook. The delay is a result of Google+ not having an API for developers to use to tap into your posts quickly and elegantly.

I sent four additional test posts through to verify the system works (with mixed results): 1) a text-only tweet posted on Google+ to the public, 2) a text-only tweet to a limited Circle only, 3) a post with a photo attached to the public, and 4) another text-only post to the public. Post no. 3 came through first, and the photo link worked, but there was a 15-minute delay before it appeared on Twitter and Facebook.

Post 4 came through with a short 10-minute delay. The other two did not come through, and I'm not sure why, although they were in rapid succession shortly after I enabled syncing.

Obviously, it's not a perfect solution, but it's the best one I've been able to find so far. Another con is that it keeps you on Google+, which isn't necessarily the platform everyone wants as their primary source.

Additionally, Google+ doesn't give you a 140 character count. If you post something that's too long for Twitter, it'll link back to Google+, which, again, is good for Google but not necessarily what you or your followers want.

If you've got different solutions or ways around these problems, let me know about it in a comment.